Lily (Flower Trilogy) by Lauren Royal

night and only translated one sentence,” he muttered, finding himself fascinated, in an odd, detached sort of way, at hearing the slur in his own voice. “We will never finish. You will never make gold.”
    “What’s a few more years when these words have been waiting for four hundred?” Ford reached across the cluttered table for a decanter of brandy, impressing Rand when he didn’t knock over any of the assorted paraphernalia. He filled Rand’s beaker for the third time. Or maybe the fourth. Rand had lost count. “So you’re in love, are you?”
    “Maybe. Probably not. I cannot be sure.” Rand paused for a sip, trying not to speculate on what chemical concoction the beaker might have held the day before. “I think so.”
    Topping off his own beaker, Ford nodded. “You’re in love.”
    “She won’t have me. ’Tis that older sister of hers.
    Rose.” Rand took another sip—or rather a gulp that he’d intended to be a sip. “She keeps pointing out how Rose and I are more suited,” he complained. “Rose sings and can speak Italian. As though I’m looking for those qualities in a lover.” Then another thought occurred to him—
    one that made the liquor seem to sour in the pit of his stomach. “What if she is only using that as an excuse?
    What if she won’t have me because I’m only a professor?
    She lives in a bloody mansion, and I—”
    “Lily is not like that,” Ford rushed to interrupt. “She cares about her animals. She cares about other people.
    She does not care where she lives.”
    Rand nodded—slowly, to keep the room from blurring—as he tried to believe that. He almost succeeded.
    “Then why does she keep bringing up Rose?”
    “Guilt,” Ford said succinctly.
    “Guilt?”
    “Look, we all know Rose wants you—”
    “Every woman wants me,” Rand said with a wide, drunken grin. He was intelligent, he was financially stable, he was charming, he was tall and—from what women had told him—apparently easy on the eyes . . .
    and as much as he hated to admit it, he had the title Lord in front of his name. No woman had ever turned down Rand Nesbitt.
    Then his expression fell. “Except Lily.”
    “Guilt.” Taking his time about it, Ford drained his beaker. “She doesn’t want to steal you from Rose.”
    “Rose doesn’t have me. Therefore Lily cannot steal me from Rose.” Rand felt inordinately proud of that observation. “Those two statements make rational sense, do they not? And I’m a professor of linguistics, not logic.”
    “You’re brilliant,” Ford said dryly. “But you’re forgetting something.”
    “What’s that?” Rand asked, marveling at the way the words sounded once they’d left his mouth. Whazzat. Had he said whazzat ?
    “The way women’s minds work. Or don’t, as the case may be. Would you care for some more brandy?”
    Rand held out his beaker. “I think I need it.”
    Ford refilled his own, too, then leaned back in his chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Listen,”
    he said, rolling the beaker between his palms, “it matters not whether Rose has you. The salient point here is that Lily knows Rose desires you, and she’s unwilling to hurt her sister by taking what Rose considers hers—never mind that you’re not and never will be—because Lily is putting her sister’s feelings before her own. She will not allow herself to marry—”
    “Who said anything about marriage?”
    “Hold your tongue and listen. Lily will not allow herself to marry before Rose, most especially to a man Rose wants for herself.”
    Rand sipped more brandy as he attempted to absorb that convoluted line of reasoning. He was truly amazed.
    “How the hell do you know all that?”
    “Violet told me. And she also said that Lily made Rose some harebrained promise to stay out of her way, which further complicates matters.”
    “Did Violet give you a solution?”
    “She said it was hopeless. But that’s where she’s wrong.” Ford leaned forward,